In 1989 or thereabouts, The Hague was to receive its 200,000th residence. To celebrate the occasion the council organized a housing festival, a string of out-of-the-rut house designs on a slender strip of land along Dedemsvaartweg masterplanned by Kees Christiaanse, at that time still working for OMA, in association with the local urban development agency. The resulting new-build has been kept as transparent as possible so that inhabitants of the adjoining housing district retain a view of the green zone of sports grounds and garden allotments beyond the new strip of housing. One and a half kilometres long and some 30 metres wide, the strip divides into three segments, each with its own type of development. The first is for various forms of freestanding and linked low-rise dwellings scaled to the surrounding allotments. The second segment comprises a string of medium-rise blocks four to five storeys high whose scale ties in with that of the adjoining district. These blocks are set square to the street for the sake of transparency. High-rise - five apartment buildings of ten or so storeys - was planned for the third segment, so as to profit from the view. The various blocks in the scheme are designed by architects of national and international standing. Setbacks in construction work have made the festival less of an example than was originally envisaged. Having said that, the projects are of above-average quality.
Projects: Kingma & Roorda (kavel 1, Housing Block), K. Oosterhuis (kavel 2, Patio dwellings), Mecanoo (kavel 3, Patio dwellings), DKV (kavel 4, Patio dwellings), Archipel Ontwerpers (kavel 12, Housing Block), Van Herk & De Kleijn (kavel 14, Housing Block), Geurst & Schulze (kavel 15, Housing Block), F.J. van Dongen (de Architekten Cie.) (kavel 16, Housing Block), J.L. Mateo (kavel 20, Housing Block), G. Bonesmo, J. Thomas (OMA) (plein Dedemsvaartweg, Housing Block), A. Zaaijer & K.W. Christiaanse (kavel 25, Housing Block), H. Ciriani (kavel 27, Housing Block), Arquitectonica (kavel 28, Housing Block)